


Sometimes I Feel

by devovere



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alcohol, Challenge Response, Female Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Long Live Feedback Comment Project
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 16:39:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17328653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devovere/pseuds/devovere
Summary: Michael isn’t sure at first why Admiral Cornwell has stopped by so late at night.





	Sometimes I Feel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Oparu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oparu/gifts).



> Warm thanks to Pixie (magnetgirl) for organizing this challenge and giving this little fic a reassuring beta-read on short notice.

They stared at each other across the threshold, the mirror of their last midnight conversation.

Michael stepped back with a wordless gesture of invitation, and Admiral Cornwell entered.

Back on Earth, after the award ceremony, they had parted on good terms. But the admiral’s unannounced arrival this morning on the _Discovery_ —a “fact-finding mission” was the official excuse—had carried an air of skeptical inquiry that precluded any such assumptions on Michael’s part. After Cornwell had interviewed Spock, his face—unreadable, perhaps, to anyone but a family member—had deepened Michael’s misgivings.

So she had been expecting this encounter … just not in her quarters and not out of uniform.

Feeling off-balance, Michael offered her visitor tea.

Cornwell produced a bottle. “Something stronger?”

After a moment, Michael nodded and then replicated tumblers of ice, taking the opportunity to turn her back and rapidly revise her assessment. Surely the admiral didn’t mean to interrogate her over whiskey. A social call, then.

She took a deep breath and carried the glasses to the sofa.

* * *

 

The alcohol worked as Kat had hoped it would, mellowing Michael’s body language and thawing the icy wall of polite defensiveness she had carried since Kat’s arrival.

When she thought the atmosphere had softened sufficiently, she asked Michael what it was like serving on the same ship with her brother. Michael’s sidelong glance was an eloquent response, if not an answer.

Katrina clarified, or tried to. “I just meant … last year your Starfleet duties led you into Sarek’s path more than once. Now Spock is here.” She gave a wry chuckle. “I don’t know about you, but when I went to space, it was largely to get away from my family.”

“I don’t hate them.” Michael was leaning back against the sofa.

“I didn’t say that.”

She turned her head to stare at Katrina. “Should I be calling you Doctor?” Seeing Katrina’s puzzlement, she sat up. “Are you here to psychoanalyze me?”

“No,” Kat replied, unruffled. “No. I wouldn’t do that anyway, but certainly not off duty and over drinks.” She leaned forward and refilled Michael’s glass, then her own.

“Then why the questions about my family?”

“They’re not about your family. They’re about you. I want to hear how you’re doing.”

Michael paused, eyes on her feet propped on the coffee table. She seemed to change the subject.

“Captain Pike is a strong leader. This crew needed one.”

“After …” Katrina swallowed down a memory of Lorca, the wrong Lorca, the imposter. “After the mirror universe?”

Michael took a drink. “Having family members here doesn’t make it feel like home.” Then another sentence slipped out. “The _Shenzhou_ was home.” She winced, looking down.

One hand cradled her glass. The other rested on her lap. Katrina gently covered it with her own, and just as gently said, “You lost your mother young. People who do tend to find other mother figures along the way.”

Michael shook her head, a gesture of denial, of pushing away. “I wouldn’t say I found Amanda. Sarek found me, and so she had to … ” Her voice trailed off and then she blinked. “She did her best. I wasn’t an easy child to love.”

“I didn’t mean your adoptive mother, Michael.” Katrina let the silence grow between them, potent, taut with grief.

Michael’s lips took shape as if to speak, but then she bit the lower one to stop its sudden tremble.

“Yes. Philippa,” Kat husked. “I loved her too, you know.”

Michael swallowed, hard, and suddenly her face was a sullen mask, a shell meant to cover a gut wound.

Katrina thought, _This is how she looked in prison._

“Her death was not your fault, Michael.”

She thought Michael wouldn’t reply, may not have even heard her.

Then Michael muttered—quietly, scornfully—“You weren’t there.”

They sat in silence, then, as Katrina pondered all the ways she had not been there for Philippa, for Gabe … for so many others. From long before the war, too. Moving up the ranks had that effect, for all that she’d sworn to herself and her old friends that it wouldn’t.

But when she looked up, Michael was gazing at her. Her eyes were warm, her head tilted to one side.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and raised a hand when Katrina started to object. “No. You’re right. She was more than my captain. More than my friend. And … you’re just trying to be one, now. Shutting you out dishonors what she taught me.”

Katrina smiled, then pressed her lips together and wiped away a tear. Her sigh held a small shudder, and she thought of how Philippa would have laughed lightly and called her maudlin.

She raised her glass. “To absent friends.”

Michael raised hers, adding, “And present ones.”  

**Author's Note:**

> The title is drawn from the spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” I recommend Bessie Griffin’s rendition on YouTube. 
> 
> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. I invite and appreciate feedback, including:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * Constructive criticism
>   * <3 as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> [LLF Comment Builder](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/post/170952243543/now-presenting-the-llf-comment-builder-beta) may be a useful resource for some. 
> 
> I reply to comments. That means you can expect me to reply to your comment, eventually and barring unforeseen circumstances. (Once in a while I miss or don't receive a notification, for example.) 
> 
> If you _don’t_ want a reply, for any reason, feel free to sign your comment with “whisper.” I will appreciate it but not respond.


End file.
